Tuesday, July 02, 2013

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 3 July - 11 July 2013

Time for another one of these already? But... I haven't even been able to finish a single review from last week! Ah, well, the holiday creates a little extra time to actually see movies

So which movies are getting a jump on the holiday? Well, one is Despicable Me 2; it may have missed a fun naming opportunity by not going with "Despicable Me Too!", but it appears to offer more cartoonish goofiness with Steve Carell as a former supervillain who is recruited by the Anti-Villain League to take down another - with the help of his Minions, of course. It plays 2D and 3D at the Capitol, Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, and the SuperLux (although the only 3D showing there is at 10pm) and in 2D only at the Studio in Belmont.

There's also Disney's revival of The Lone Ranger, in which Johnny Depp's Tonto gets top billing over Armie Hammer as the title character. Depp's reunited with Pirates and Rango director Gore Verbinski, and they appear to have spent a lot of money on trains. It plays the Capitol, Apple, Boston Common, Fenway, and the SuperLux. There's also Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain, a comedy concert film from a guy who has been a big deal in stand-up for the past few years (though I apparently blinked and missed him in This Is the End). It's at Fenway & Boston Common.

The Coolidge has a special presentation on Wednesday: Director Cathryne Czubek will show her documentary on women who feel empowered by firearms, A Girl and a Gun, in the screening room and answer questions afterward. Their new release, on the other hand, opens on Friday with Barbara Sukowa as Hannah Arendt, the journalist who coined the phrase "the banality of evil" while covering the early-1960s trial of Nazi war criminal... less bloodthirstily than some would have liked. It, along with 20 Feet from Stardom, splits time between the screening room and larger screens.

With a new month comes a new theme for their @fter Midnite movies, and for July it's "New York City Psychos", starting this weekend with Friday the 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan running Friday and Saturday at midnight. For those not into what is supposedly one of the weaker entries in the slasher series, they'll have Bring It On as a less bloodthirsty alternative. Both are on 35mm, as (I believe) is Monday's Big Screen Classics presentation of Lawrence of Arabia. I really should give that another chance someday.

Kendall Square also opens its new movies on Friday, most prominently IFFBoston alumnus The Way, Way Back, one of those indie coming-of-age movies that pairs some relatively unknown kids (in this case, Liam James plays the alienated son of a woman with a new boyfriend) with a bunch of pretty great character actors - Sam Rockwell, Steve Carell, Toni Collette, Alison Janney, Maya Rudolph, etc., etc. They also book More Than Honey for a week; it's a neat documentary that's more about modern beekeeping than colony collapse disorder, with some amazing footage of insects that really freak me out.

The Brattle Theatre hasn't quite got its summer schedule completely filled out yet, but it concludes the spring one with the last two days of their DCP Debut series, featuring a new restoration of Badlands at 7pm Wednesday, with Jaws at 9:15pm and all day Thursday (note that, like the Coolidge and several other non-chain screens, "all day" on the Fourth does not include 9pm shows - go watch fireworks!).

The first week of the new calendar is out, though, and Stomp Boston: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack looks like a hell of a lot of fun. The original King Kong plays most of Friday with Monsters (as it turns out, a successful audition to direct the new American Godzilla film) at 9:30pm, with Saturday featuring classic Japanese kaiju: Mothra (digital, subtitled) & Destroy All Monsters (dubbed) in the afternoon and Godzilla vs. Mechogodzilla (dubbed) & Godzilla/Mothra/King Ghidorah: Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, the Shusuke Kaneko-directed penultimate Japanese Godzilla sequel, in the evening. Sunday is a Ray Harryhausen triple feature of The Best from 20,000 Fathoms, It Came from Beneath the Sea (digital), and 20 Million Miles to Earth; Monday has New York targeted with Cloverfield and Q: The Winged Serpent; Seoul gets it on Tuesday with Bong Joon-ho's The Host. Wednesday is Lost World night, with the Andrew Alden Ensemble accompanying the 1925 version of Conan Doyle's second-most famous creation and tentative plans for Steve Spielberg's The Lost World: Jurassic Park after.

Finally, Thursday is the annual Trailer Treats party, with trailers great and terrible, barbecue for those who arrive early, and the finalists in their "Trailer Smackdown" contest with audience voting!

At the Somerville Theatre, the Cinema Slumber Party has Friday and Saturday night screenings of Drive this weekend. They've also got DisneyNature documentary Oceans for their affordable family feature; it plays Saturday at 11am with tickets $2 apiece. The Capitol in Arlington's "Summer Rewind" series skips the kids' matinee this week, but has The Breakfast Club on Friday and Saturday nights at 10:30pm (with John Hughes movies seeming to dominate the July schedule).

Apple Cinemas appears to be offering daily free kids' movies at 11am; like Somerville, they're starting with the DisneyNature series, with Oceans running through Friday the 5th and Chimpanzee replacing it on Saturday the 6th.

The Gathr Preview Presents... series continues Tuesdays at the Regent Theatre in Arlington (though it's not yet listed on their site), this week showasing Three Worlds, a film by Catherine Corsini about a man who hits a pedestrian while driving drunk, the victim's wife, and the woman who saw it all and acts as a sort of go-between before falling in love with the man. One show, Tuesday evening.

The MFA's film program is mostly on hiatus for the beginning of the month, but returns on Thursday the 11th with the opening night of their 18th Annual Boston French Film Festival, featuring The Nun (starring Pauline Etienne and Isabelle Huppert), with a reception beforehand. The series runs through the 28th.

iMovieCafe has two movies opening at Apple Cinemas. Singam 2 opens Thursday the 4th and seems to get the better times, but it's in Tamil without subtitles, so I don't know what it's about. Lootera opens Friday; it stars Ranveer Singh as an archaeologist and Sonakshi Sinha as the local girl he falls for but then separates from. It's in Hindi with subtitles. Telugu-language film Balupu plays some single shows on Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday; subtitled Hindi film Ghanchakkar plays Wednesday and Thursday.

The weekly Music & Movie Fridays show at the Boston Harbor Hotel is E.T., playing at sundown on the 5th with live music for a couple hours before (weather permitting, of course).

The Harvard Film Archive has it's Members' Weekend; if you're a member, you probably know what's playing and can lord it over the rest of us

My plans? To be honest, mostly monster movies at the Brattle before falling asleep watching baseball as the Sox have a West Coast road trip. I'll probably try and catch up with Much Ado (honest) and maybe catch Drive or squeeze a screening of The Lone Ranger in there.